Arts & Ideas Turns 20 And Parties Like It's 2015

Darial R. Sneed,

Ragamala Dance Company

Ragamala Dance Company

(Darial R. Sneed,)

CHRISTOPHER ARNOTT

Arts & Ideas: Much more than just the free outdoor events on New Haven Green

New Haven's International Festival of Arts & Ideas turns 20 this month. When a band or a theater troupe or a gallery hits that age, it's pretty exciting. With a festival, though, it's a multifaceted, multidimensional anniversary that encompasses the growth and change of countless artists, presenters, programmers, venues and cultures.

Arts & Ideas means many things to many people. Some know it mainly for its free outdoor events on New Haven Green (and, in recent years, "pop-up celebrations" in city parks in the Dixwell, Fair Haven and other neighborhoods). Others treasure A&I for bringing artists to town who are on the verge of major recognition.

The festival's fondness for modern dance troupes and small classical ensembles has earned it the right to present many world premieres, including Martin Bresnick and J.D. McClatchy's "My Friend's Story" in 2013. The festival has hosted the U.S. premieres of operas (Hilda Paredes' "El Palacio Imaginado"), important new plays (Michael Frayn's "Copenhagen") and musicals.

As for the "Ideas" side of Arts & Ideas, everyone from E.O. Wilson to Robert Sternberg to Spike Lee to Harold Bloom has lectured there, and topics from environmentalism to the Black Panthers have been discussed.

The first International Festival of Arts & Ideas, in June 1996, was scarcely more than a weekend long, with a fraction of the number of events the festival has today, but that first attempt laid down a structure and attitude that is still followed. Essential elements have included a mix of free and ticketed events, the festival as a launching pad for artists from other countries and a desire to premiere new works.

Most important, however international it gets, Arts & Ideas always remembers that it's in New Haven. The city's multicultural, arts-loving identity is critical to the image of Arts & Ideas.

This year's Art & Ideas, happening June 12-27 throughout New Haven, neatly reflects what the festival has become, as well as where it hopes to go. It's a platform for local talent to share stages with prominent national acts. Outside on New Haven Green, June 20 at 7 p.m., the New Haven Symphony Orchestra accompanies vocalist Kurt Elling in a concert of love songs that underscores a festival-wide celebration of Frank Sinatra. That's a week after a love-song-singer of a different sensibility, Darlene Love, kicks off the series of free concerts on the Green 7 p.m.

The festival has always tried to bring in new and exciting acts while inviting back a few favorites . Nothing is allowed to get stale at Arts & Ideas. This year, Angélique Kidjo — who first played the festival in 2002 — returns for another Green show having won a Grammy for her latest album. and Lucinda Williams will be on the Green June 26, followed there June 27 by the dozen-strong Puerto Rican ensemble Plena Libre.

Taylor Mac, the New York drag performance artist who's played Yale but not A&I , brings a world premiere "performative ritual" titled "The 1990s" to the festival June 12 and 13. Another theater piece at A&I 2015 that references the '90s is Roger Guenveur Smith's one-man show, "Rodney King." The theater company 600 Highwaymen brings its show "Employee of the Year," performed by young girls with an original score by performance artist David Cale. There's a long A&I tradition of welcoming fresh circus theater troupes; this year it's Machine de Cirque.

The acclaimed director and choreographer Mark Morris, who was last at the festival in 2009 conducting the revival of his own production of Purcell's "Dido and Aeneas," returns with "the exclusive East Coast engagement" of another myth-based dance, Handel's "Acis and Galatea."

Filmmaker Mike Leigh ("Secrets & Lies") will discuss his recent film bio of the painter J.M.W. Turner on June 18 . Other Ideas celebrities include New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast speaking on "Cartoons as Family Memoirs" June 13, a discussion of "Cooperation Amidst Crisis: May Day 1970 and Its Lessons" June 18, and a June 16 talk with dancer and Women's Studies professor Angela Bowne titled "From Artist to Activist: A New Haven Legend."

That's just a fraction of the dozens of Arts & Ideas events. There are tours of the city, film screenings and talks with some of the festival performers, including dance legend Carmen de Lavallade, who's doing her one-woman autobiographical show "As I Remember It" and also discussing her life in an Ideas talk.